Taxpayer-funded Texas schools blame world wars on evolution and lack of religion

Friday, January 17, 2014 12:59 EST

Texas students in publicly funded charter schools run by Responsive Education Solutions are learning that, “in the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth,” as well as that feminism is responsible for single women turning to the federal government as “surrogate husband[s].”

According to Zack Kopplin at Slate, Responsive Education Solutions has been “infiltrating and subverting” the charter school movement in order to push an explicitly Christian, conservative agenda.

Responsive Education Solutions has 17,000 students, more than 65 schools, and receives $82 million in public funding annually.

Kopplin acquired workbook for the school’s biology “Knowledge Unit,” which shares a first sentence with the King James Bible: “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

The book manufactures doubt where none should exist, and it does so deliberately. Rosalinda Gonalez, Response Education Solution’s Vice President of Academic Affairs, told Kopplin that the workbook “teaches evolution, noting, but not exploring, the existence of competing theories.”

However, even merely “noting” the existence of non-scientific “competing theories” was held to be unconstitutional by Edwards v. Aguillard.

The “Knowledge Units” pertaining to history are similarly problematic, only instead of pushing creation science on unwitting students, they showcase a version of history that contains a distinctly conservative ideological bias.

Let us look at two autocratic emperors who played a key role in starting World War I: Czar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Where they liberal Christians, agnostics, atheists or otherwise Enlightenment supporters? Had they “abandoned” religion? No sir. They both headed state churches. Czar Nicholas combined that with faith in questionable ‘faith healer’ Rasputin.

The New Deal “ushered in a new era of dependency on the Federal government,” and feminism created a class of women who “lacked male financial support and who had to turn to the state as a surrogate husband.”

According to Kopplin, its explicitly moral components refer not to civic virtues, but to “values” borrowed whole-cloth — and without citation — from the website of Bill Gothard, a minister who demands his followers incorporate “biblical principles” into daily life.

One significant problem with crypto-Christian charter schools operating in Texas is that the state only allows for 300 charter schools to operate at any one time. This means that these stealth-creationist, conservative outfits are preventing legitimately innovative charter schools from opening in the state.

Kopplin calls this “a moment of truth for the charter movement and for Texas politicians. Will they support removing from charter programs these schools that break the law?”

Calls for oversight into Ohio charter schools have been renewed this week, after an unprecedented 17 charter schools closed in Columbus, Ohio, in one year. Eleven of those closures took place this fall, forcing more than 250 students to scramble at the last minute to find new schools. The majority of the shuttered schools were open only a few months, and some only a few weeks. Although the educational viability of these schools was highly suspect—numerous charters have been involved in questionable practices—the state of Ohio used $1.6 million in public taxpayer money just to keep nine of these schools open only from August through October or November: here.

A “drag­on” thought to have turned up out­side Rome in the 1600s was killed once, or even twice, in the lo­cal lo­re of its day.

It then lay for­got­ten for three cen­turies—be­fore tak­ing on yet a new life, in the minds of some crea­t­ion­ists who saw in the tale com­pel­ling ev­i­dence for their be­liefs.

Two bi­ol­o­gists from Fay­ette­ville State Uni­vers­ity in North Car­o­li­na have now de­cid­ed to slay the beast once and for all, by do­ing some sleuthing to con­firm what many Ital­ians al­ready sus­pected way back then.

The drag­on was a hoax, they con­clude. Such ex­ist­ence as it had, they add, was based on a forgery com­posed of var­i­ous an­i­mal bones. In that sense it was not too un­like the fa­mous Pilt­down Man, a fake “early hu­man” con­sist­ing of the low­er jaw­bone of an orang­u­tan com­bined with a hu­man skull. That scheme was ex­posed in 1953.

The drag­on sto­ry as trans­mit­ted through old doc­u­ments has de­light­ed some crea­t­ion­ists be­cause they cite the mon­ster—en­grav­ings from the time in­clude a de­tailed skele­tal view—as proof that con­tra­ry to main­stream sci­ence, a fly­ing, rep­til­i­an cous­in of the di­no­saurs lived just re­cent­ly.

But the tale cap­ti­vat­ed Ital­ians long be­fore ar­gu­ments over ev­o­lu­tion. The sto­ry brings us back to about the time when the great sculp­tor-ar­chi­tect Gian Lo­ren­zo Ber­ni­ni re­built the fa­mous square in front of St. Pe­ter’s Ba­sil­i­ca in Rome, erect­ing its cel­e­brat­ed col­on­nade.

A cou­ple of dec­ades af­ter that proj­ect, ru­mors of the drag­on cropped up in con­nec­tion with an­oth­er, less fa­mous con­struc­tion near­by.

Ac­tu­al­ly, one pub­lished ver­sion of the drag­on tale ac­tu­ally dat­ed its “death” to the mid­dle of the St. Pe­ter’s Square proj­ect, in 1660. Yet ma­te­ri­al in an­oth­er book sug­gests that ru­mors of its sight­ing cir­cu­lat­ed about 1691, in the swamps out­side Rome where a di­ke was un­der con­struc­tion. Which­ev­er ver­sion might ac­cu­rately re­flect the “real” ru­mor, the lat­ter book is the one with the en­grav­ings.

This book, by an en­gi­neer in­volved with the di­ke, states that the drag­on was killed and pro­vides three de­light­ful en­graved il­lustra­t­ions. But it says lit­tle else on the sub­ject, ex­cept to men­tion that the beast was “was reco­vered in the hands of the en­gi­neer” him­self, one Cor­ne­li­us Mey­er. The book is mostly about di­ke con­struc­tion proj­ects around Rome.

De­tails on the bi­zarre rep­til­i­an tale are thus fog­gy. But the two bi­ol­o­gists, Pon­danesa D. Wil­kins and Phil Sen­ter, spec­u­late, based on the doc­u­ments, that a drag­on ru­mor be­came an ob­sta­cle to a di­ke con­struc­tion in 1691. Lo­cals or work­ers might have balked at the proj­ect, be­liev­ing a drag­on was on the loose in the ar­ea, per­haps one that was an­gry over the dis­turb­ance of its home. The beast was per­haps viewed as a res­ur­rec­tion of the same mon­ster writ­ten else­where to have died in 1660, al­so in the Rome ar­ea.

The explanation for the engravings is that “Meyer chose not to invite op­position by ex­press­ing skepticism about the lo­cal rumor,” they argue. “In­stead, he wisely chose to avoid re­sist­ance by hu­moring the lo­cals… em­bracing the lo­cal rumor and pro­viding vi­sual evid­ence that their source of con­cern had been van­quished.”

Wil­kins and Sen­ter ar­gue that some­one likely cob­bled to­geth­er a fake skel­e­ton. This nat­u­rally found its way in­to some of those closely ob­served de­pic­tions for which Ital­ians had such a flair. In one of these en­grav­ings, the ske­l­e­ton ap­pears, prop­erly perched on a charm­ing ba­roque ped­es­tal.

All that re­mained was for Wil­kins and Sen­ter to fig­ure out just what went in­to this “skel­e­ton.” In­ter­est­ingly “the en­grav­ing is de­tailed enough to test” the view that it’s a real pter­o­saur, the re­search­ers wrote.

The con­clu­sions from their analysis are cut­ting.

“The skull of Mey­er’s drag­on is that of a do­mes­tic dog,” they write. “The man­di­ble is that of a sec­ond, smaller do­mes­tic dog. The ‘hindlimb’ is the fore­limb of a bear. The ribs are from a large fish. Os­ten­si­ble skin hides the junc­tions be­tween the parts of dif­fer­ent an­i­mals. The tail is a sculpted fake. The wings are fake and lack di­ag­nos­tic traits of bat wings and pter­o­saur wings. No part of the ske­l­e­ton re­sem­bles its coun­ter­part in pter­o­saurs.”

“This piece of young-Earth crea­t­ion­ist ‘ev­i­dence’ there­fore now joins the ranks of oth­er dis­cred­ited ‘ev­i­dence’ for hu­man-pter­o­saur coex­ist­ence and against the ex­ist­ence of the pas­sage of mil­lions of years,” Wil­kins and Sen­ter add. “Also, a three-century-old hoax is fi­nally un­veiled, the mys­tery of its con­struc­tion is solved, and an in­ter­est­ing and bi­zarre ep­i­sode in Ren­ais­sance Ital­ian histo­ry is elucidat­ed.”

Skep­ti­cism over the drag­on yarn is far from new. The con­tem­po­rary Ger­man au­thor George Kirch­meyer re­counts that the “fly­ing ser­pent” was sup­posedly “killed by a hunt­er af­ter a se­vere and dan­ger­ous strug­gle”; but “this sto­ry, which ap­peared more like some fa­ble than real truth, was a sub­ject of dis­cus­sion among the learn­ed. The cir­cum­stance was de­nied by many, be­lieved by oth­ers, and left in doubt by sev­er­al.”

Two crea­t­ion­ists who have cho­sen to join the be­liev­ers are the au­thors John Go­ertzen and Da­vid Woet­zel, who penned 1998 and 2006 pa­pers on the sub­ject, re­spec­tive­ly.

“This study helps to es­tab­lish the re­cent ex­ist­ence of rham­phorhyn­choid pter­o­saurs; an­i­mals that main­stream sci­ence be­lieves be­came ex­tinct about 140 mil­lion years ago,” Go­ertzen wrote in his pa­per, which ap­peared in the Pro­ceed­ings of the Fourth In­terna­t­ional Con­fer­ence on Crea­t­ion.

Crea­t­ion­ists claim that the Bi­ble proves Earth is only a few thou­sand years old. Thus things like di­no­saurs, which died out 65 mil­lion years ago, pose a prob­lem for crea­t­ion­ists.

Woet­zel did not re­spond to an e­mail sent through his web­site re­quest­ing com­ment.

Go­ertzen could not be lo­cat­ed via e­mail or tel­e­phone, with none of his sev­er­al pa­pers on­line pro­vid­ing con­tact in­forma­t­ion. How­ev­er, his 1998 pa­per on the drag­on ar­gued that the Ital­ian drag­on tale was not the only piece of ev­i­dence for its re­cent ex­ist­ence.

“The re­mark­a­ble thing about this an­i­mal is that it was de­picted in sev­er­al cul­tures of an­ti­qu­ity. Ar­ti­facts iden­ti­fied with this in­ter­est­ing pter­o­saur spe­cies in­clude Roman-Alex­and­rian coins, an Ara­bia-Phil­istia coin, a French wood carv­ing, a Ger­man stat­ue and coin, sev­er­al Mid­dle Ages pic­ture maps, and an en­light­en­ing sketch of a mount­ed an­i­mal in Rome.”

Los Angeles — The awe-inspiring Grand Canyon was probably carved about 70 million years ago, much earlier than thought, a provocative new study suggests.

Using a new dating tool, a team of scientists came up with a different age for the gorge’s western section, challenging conventional wisdom that much of the canyon was scoured by the mighty Colorado River in the last 5 million to 6 million years.

Not everyone is convinced with the latest viewpoint published online last week in the journal Science. Critics contend the study ignores a mountain of evidence pointing to a geologically young landscape and they have doubts about the technique used to date it.

The notion that the Grand Canyon existed during the dinosaur era is “ludicrous,” said geologist Karl Karlstrom of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

How the Grand Canyon became grand — with its vertical cliffs and flat plateaus — has been debated since John Wesley Powell navigated the whitewater rapids and scouted the sheer walls during his 1869 expedition.

Some 5 million tourists flock to Arizona each year to marvel at the 277-mile-long chasm, which plunges a mile deep in some places. It’s a geologic layer cake with the most recent rock formations near the rim stacked on top of older rocks that date back 2 billion years.

Doubting the process

Though the exposed rocks are ancient, most scientists believe the Grand Canyon itself was forged in the recent geologic past, created when tectonic forces uplifted the land that the Colorado River later carved through.

The new work by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and California Institute of Technology argued that canyon-cutting occurred long before that. They focused on the western end of the Grand Canyon occupied today by the Hualapai Reservation, which owns the Skywalk attraction, a horseshoe-shaped glass bridge that extends from the canyon’s edge.

To come up with the age, the team crushed rocks collected from the bottom of the canyon to analyze a rare type of mineral called apatite. The mineral contains traces of radioactive elements that release helium during decay, allowing researchers to calculate the passage of time since the canyon eroded.

Their interpretation: The western Grand Canyon is 70 million years old and was likely shaped by an ancient river that coursed in the opposite direction of the west-flowing Colorado.

Lead researcher Rebecca Flowers of the University of Colorado Boulder realizes not everyone will accept this alternative view, which minimizes the role of the Colorado River.

“Arguments will continue over the age of Grand Canyon, and I hope our study will stimulate more work to decipher the mysteries,” Flowers said in an email.

More number disputes

It’s not the first time that Flowers has dug up evidence for an older Grand Canyon. In 2008, she wrote a study that suggested part of the eastern Grand Canyon, where most tourists go, formed 55 million years ago. Another study published that same year by a different group of researchers put the age of the western section at 17 million years old.

If the Grand Canyon truly existed before dinosaurs became extinct, it would have looked vastly different because the climate back then was more tropical. Dinosaurs that patrolled the American West then included smaller tyrannosaurs, horned and dome-headed dinosaurs and duckbills.

If they peered over the rim, it would not look like “the starkly beautiful desert of today, but an environment with more lush vegetation,” said University of Maryland paleontologist Thomas Holtz.

Many scientists find it hard to imagine an ancient Grand Canyon since the oldest gravel and sediment that washed downstream date to about 6 million years ago and there are no signs of older deposits.

And while they welcome advanced dating methods to decipher the canyon’s age, Karlstrom of the University of New Mexico does not think the latest effort is very accurate.

Derry’s rich political history, its city walls and the music you hear wherever you go make it a city of history and culture. In 2013 that will be officially recognised.

The north Antrim coast road is perhaps my favourite drive in the world. It swoops along with the sea as your constant companion and takes in tiny fishing ports and bustling holiday resorts.

At Carrick-a-Rede every spring, salmon fishermen stretch a rope bridge worthy of Indiana Jones across the maelstrom between the cliffs and a rocky offshore outcrop.

Brave souls can cross the swinging bridge for themselves.

Belfast’s shipyards in 1912 built the largest, most luxurious passenger liner the world had ever seen. They launched her into Belfast Lough and proudly named her the Titanic.

A century later Belfast has created the Titanic Quarter.

Much more than a museum, you can still visit the original dry-dock and slip where the mighty behemoth of the oceans was built and launched.

Today Belfast is peaceful. I walked up the Shankill and down the Falls, two roads that have featured in many headlines over recent years.

Huge political murals make this a fascinating place to visit.

The best pub in the city is called The Morning Star.

At Bushmills they have been making whiskey for the last 400 years. After a taste or two I had to agree they have just about got the recipe right.

Best of all is the Giant’s Causeway (above) – the jewel of Northern Ireland‘s landscape.

The new multimillion-pound visitors’ centre seeks to tell its story. But the National Trust has chosen to tell the Causeway’s history in several ways – at least one of them unbelievable.

Science tells us the thousands of regular sculpted hexagonal basalt columns are the result of volcanic activity. Cooling liquid rock sculpted the vast and unique outcrop jutting into the waves.

Here in this land of myths you can perhaps understand why the National Trust also relates the ancient legend of the giant Finn McCool and how he created the Causeway.

Much more incredible is that here in the new centre the National Trust has caved in to local religious bigots and included a good dose of creationist nonsense.

You can read, in this supposedly educational centre, the theory that God created the Earth and thus the Causeway, fully formed, just six thousand years ago and that Darwin and his evolutionary theories are nonsense.

Weird Science: Six ‘Scientific’ Theories That Right-Wingers Insist Are True

August 24th, 2012 11:08 pm

Jason Sattler

Mike Huckabee isn’t the only conservative now defending Todd Akin (R-MO) — who is still running to replace Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the U.S. Senate. Huckabee and other religious right leaders within the GOP insist that Akin is right — although many of the party’s leading figures — including the party’s presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus — asked Akin to withdraw after the congressman said that victims of “legitimate rape” can’t get pregnant.

Conservapedia – the right-wing alternative to Wikipedia – not only supports Akin, but has published a footnoted reference that defends Akin’s scientific prognosis about “legitimate rape” victims — something that only Rep. Steve King (R-IA), of all elected Republicans, has attempted to do so far. “In the experience of most sexual assault centers, the chance of pregnancy occurring is quite low,” says Conservapedia, quoting from “the classic text book by Lentz.” It’s a text that American women impregnated by rape — estimated between 25,000 and 32,000 victims annually — would surely dispute.

Rewriting science to fit a political agenda is a constant complaint conservatives voice about liberals. Yet the left believes in the academic discipline of rigorous peer review. The right continually relies on literal interpretations of the Bible and pseudo-science, which is the only way you’d ever buy any of the following theories.

A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has alarmed biologists, who say that they were not consulted. “The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge,” says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.

The campaign was led by the Society for Textbook Revise (STR), which aims to delete the “error” of evolution from textbooks to “correct” students’ views of the world, according to the society’s website. The society says that its members include professors of biology and high-school science teachers.

to attack the teaching of evolution itself”, says Joonghwan Jeon, an evolutionary psychologist at Kyung Hee University in Yongin.

…

In a 2009 survey conducted for the South Korean documentary The Era of God and Darwin, almost one-third of the respondents didn’t believe in evolution. Of those, 41% said that there was insufficient scientific evidence to support it; 39% said that it contradicted their religious beliefs; and 17% did not understand the theory. The numbers approach those in the United States, where a survey by the research firm Gallup has shown that around 40% of Americans do not believe that humans evolved from less advanced forms of life.

On a world scale, the most important opposition to evolution biological science comes from Christian creationists; who are influential especially in the economically and militarily most powerful country of the world, the USA. They claim to draw the only correct conclusions from the comparatively long and detailed creation narrative in the Bible book Genesis.

“Harun Yahya” may sound somewhat less anti-science than many Christian creationists, as he does not attack scientific evidence that some fossils of animals or plants are hundreds of millions years old; while Christian creationists tend to claim that life on earth is just a few thousand years old. Nevertheless, “Yahya” is as anti-evolution as American fellow creationism. In Saudi Arabia, important ally of the USA, and theocratic dictatorial monarchy, teaching evolution is illegal.

Al-Jisr was much better informed about evolution theory than Al-Afghani, Ghaly says:

“Al-Afghani said that evolutionists believe that a flea in the course of centuries can transform itself into an elephant. Al-Jisr said that according to this theory, humans, like other animals, have evolved via natural selection and that it is not impossible that humans and apes have a common ancestor. He gave the evolution theory the benefit of the doubt and concluded that it does not conflict with the Qur’an, as long as space remains within the theory for God as the ultimate Creator. The creation story in the Qur’an is quite brief, said Al-Jisr, and is intended to affirm belief in God, not for scientific information.

This religious opinion (fatwa) was taken over by scholars from Turkey, from Syria and throughout the Arabic speaking world.”

SUPERIOR

Al-Jisr wanted his “approval” of Darwin to show that Islam as a rational religion is the ally of all true science, and that Islamic belief is superior to, in his eyes, dogmatic Christianity. That position was welcomed by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid